from the flour-town dept

I didn't realize this, but apparently Rochester, NY is nicknamed "The Flour City." You learn so much being a Techdirt writer. Anyway, Rochester became one of the largest flour-producing cities in the world back in the 1800s, which likewise caused a great deal of food-related businesses to spring up in the city as well. Many of those businesses today include "Flour City" somewhere in their names. In fact, something like seventy businesses in Rochester have "Flour City" in their names. Yet, in a brief legal scare, one local business decided that it, and only it, should suddenly control the term for the food business and began sending out cease and desist letters. That is until the backlash became too heavy to handle.

All should be able to breathe a bit easier now that Flour City Pasta appears to be backing off local attempts to enforce the trademark for its name, and exclusivity over "Flour City." A dust-up occurred recently after the Macedon-based company sent cease-and-desist letters to some local businesses in the food service industry, which included Keith Myers and his Rochester-based Flour City Bread Co.

Flour City Pasta owner Jon Stadt backed off the demands Tuesday morning, adding on a Facebook post that "it was never our intention to harm a fellow merchant, especially one we so respect. Our concern was the threat of out-of-state competition and confusion over our name Flour City Pasta — a brand that we spent five years building and protecting."

Yes, Flour City Pasta was so immeasurably concerned about other companies out of state using the "Flour City" phrase in commerce that it trained its sights first on all the in state businesses doing so. Sorry, that doesn't pass the smell test, unless we're specifically smell-testing for bullshit. What actually happened is that Flour City Bread had started up a crowd-funding campaign to support the business and petition the government to cancel Flour City Pasta's trademark entirely. At that point, the pasta company went limp noodle and ran away.

But not, of course, before trotting out every trademark bully's favorite excuse.

While the company appears to be backing off local enforcement, it still would likely pursue enforcement from out-of-state interests infringing upon its business, said Nunes [Flour City Pasta's attorney], adding that a petition for a business in Florida has the local pasta company concerned.

"This was the concern from the get-go," he said. "It never was about Rochester. It’s about out-of-state sales. You have to police the market and that is why you have to send out cease-and-desist orders. If you don’t police the market … eventually people will strip you of your rights to the (trademark)."

And they'll probably have a hard time fighting that Florida company on the merits, as it seems that all kinds of food-makers are using the Flour City name already, and have done so for years. And yet, despite all of this common use, these companies have stuck around. It will be interesting to hear why Flour City Pasta thinks the name can be widely used within Rochester but must be protected from companies in Florida. The reality is probably more along the lines that Flour City shouldn't be a trademark in the first place.

from the good-for-them dept

Last week, we wrote about the absolutely ridiculous situation, in which a woman who filmed the police in the process of a traffic stop in front of her house was arrested and charged with "obstructing government administration." The whole thing was clearly a sham, involving law enforcement that didn't like having their actions scrutinized in perfectly legal ways. The vast publicity that story generated apparently made law enforcement in Rochester think twice about going ahead with the case. Shane alerts us to the news that the district attorney decided "after reviewing the evidence" that "there was no legal basis" to continue the case and asked for it to be dismissed, which the judge granted.

This followed reports over the weekend that, during a meeting over the weekend in support of the woman, police went on a selective enforcement rampage, looking for any reason to give the supporters parking tickets, including being parked more than 12 inches off of the curb.

The whole situation caused the mayor, the head of city counsel and the chief of police to put out a joint statement saying that its procedures for handling such things will be reviewed, including the whole parking ticket mess:

"We believe that the incident that led to Ms. Good's arrest and the subsequent ticketing for parking violations of vehicles belonging to members of an organization associated with Ms. Good raise issues with respect to the conduct of Rochester Police Officers that require an internal review. A review into both matters has been initiated."

"Police officers must be able to cope with a high degree of stress while performing oftentimes dangerous duties, relying on their training and experience to guide their behavior. As routine as a traffic stop may appear, it has proven over time to be a potentially dangerous activity for police. Nonetheless, police must conduct themselves with appropriate respect for the rights of those involved or who are observing their actions."

"There is a mandated legal process that governs our internal response when police officer behavior is called into question. We must respect this process and that may be frustrating to those who may have already made up their mind about the outcome. We have confidence that the review will be fair and impartial and invite Ms. Good and anyone else with firsthand information to participate. We will withhold our judgment until the review is completed."

"Whatever the outcome of the internal review, we want to make clear that it is not the policy or practice of the Rochester Police Department to prevent citizens from observing its activities - including photographing or videotaping - as long as it does not interfere with the safe conduct of those activities. It is also not the policy or practice of the Department to selectively enforce laws in response to the activities of a group or individual. This has always been the case and it is being reinforced within the Department, so that it will be abundantly clear to everyone."

Of course, given all that, one thing still not explained is why the DA pressed charges in the first place. While it's good that they've now decided that there was no legal basis, isn't the point to determine that before you press charges?